Marrakech has long been a popular destination for famous people such as French designer Yves Saint Laurent and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the 50s who described a spot in the city as “the most beautiful place in the world.”

Marrakech made it to the top ten lists of shopping holiday destination, best tourist destination, and best street food cities. 

This third largest city in Morocco is also a popular spring break destination for Indonesian students in Europe, as Indonesian citizens do not need visas to visit the country.

We flew in from London to Marrakech’s Menara airport and headed directly to Maison Bahia, a bed and breakfast in a dar, a house with an open courtyard. It was perfect for our student budget and most of all Maison Bahia is located only 100 meters from Jemaa-El Fna square.

The cultural space of Jemaa El-Fna Square at the entrance of Medina, the old part of town, was inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The place has been bustling since the eleventh century and is the center of cultural and commercial activities.

During the day, visitors will be able to observe services such as traditional medicine, snake charming, fortune-telling, preaching, and henna tattooing. When evening comes artistic performances by storytellers, dancers, acrobats, and musicians entertain sightseers from all over the world.

We stopped by a cactus fruits vendor who split the fruits in two, put a tiny stick and pulled out the juicy meat. It was pulpy, sour and colored our teeth and hands purple. The genus Opuntia,  common in Morocco is high in sugar and has potassium, magnesium, calcium and vitamins C, A, B1 and B2.

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While doughnuts, juices and nuts are popular during the day, food carts with elaborate spread on grills and steaming cauldrons crowd the square in the evening.

Paula Wolfert, the queen of Mediterranean cuisines who has won many awards for her cookbooks, described Moroccan food as spiced, not spicy.  

During our stay in Marrakech most of the foods served are tagine and couscous. Couscous is a dish made from tiny granules of durum wheat. The couscous grains are then prepared by steaming them until they have a light, fluffy consistency and prepared as part of a meat or vegetable stew seasoned with cumin.  

A tagine is a ceramic or clay cookware that also means succulent dish slow­ cooked inside the ware. Usually, a tagine is a rich stew of meat, chicken, or fish, and most often includes vegetables or fruit.  

Moroccan Mint Tea, tea steeped with lots of spearmint, is part of Moroccan hospitality and culture. In our trips the mint tea, sometimes poured to a decorative Moroccan tea glass,  is served almost everywhere in any time of day, often as a welcoming gesture.

As we only have a few days in Marrakech, our friends suggested we contacted Farid and Mustapha, tour guides at the Moroccan Nature Trail to ask what they have to offer for day trips.

Touring the Ourika Valley in the Atlas Mountains was like taking geography, geology and botany lessons. The Mountains extend for more than 2,000 kilometers from the Moroccan port of Agadir in the southwest, to the Tunisian capital of Tunis in the northeast.

We visited a Berber family and appreciate how the indigenous North Africans who live in the mountains welcomed us.

Our day trip to Quarzazate, the gateway to the Sahara dessert, was a memorable one where we again went through the Atlas Mountains and crossing Tizi N Tichka pass with stunning landscapes and many authentic Berber villages.

The Ksar of Ait-Ben-Haddou, the ancient architecture of southern Morocco is another UNESCO world heritage site. It is a group of earthen buildings surrounded by high walls, a traditional pre-Saharan habitat.

The Ait-Ben-Haddou is a popular film set for many Hollywood Movies including Lawrence of Arabia in 1961, Indiana Jones in 1996, and the TV series The Games of Thrones in 2012.

It was really endearing to see the simple yet elegant views without Hollywood commotion on site. The impressive list of films shot there is only shown in a simple plastic covered board.

In one of our day trips we managed to see argan oil artisans, mostly Moroccan women. According to the Argan Oil Society, argan tree (Argania spinosa) is one of the rarest found trees in the world dating back to millions of years.

It has both culinary and cosmetic use and has been named the liquid gold by the Europeans as the oil has the tremendous ability to restore the natural freshness and tightness of skin.

Berber women use a traditional lengthy process to produce argan oil. Each dried nut has to be cracked open to remove the kernels and grind the nuts by hand until they have a paste. The paste is squeezed to extract the oil. It is said that producing one liter of oil takes 20 hours' work.  

Marrakech maybe the most beautiful place in the world as Winston Churchill said; undeniably it has many more, romantic, artistic and exotic attractions to discover during spring break.

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Images: Omar Niode Foundation